


baby, you can (drive my car)

by AceQueenKing



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Comfort, Complicated Relationships, Forgiveness, Gen, Gift Giving, Post-Canon, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:41:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21889093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: Persephone eyes her husband warily. He grins at her in the bright summer sunshine, with about as much playfulness as the man has ever offered as he gestures toward his latest and most desperate gift: a new car.“What do you think, lover?” He asks. He playfully leans over the door. He is trying, she knows, very hard. This is one of his grand romantic gestures. She treats it accordingly.
Relationships: Hades/Persephone (Hadestown)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 107
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	baby, you can (drive my car)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aproclivity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aproclivity/gifts).



> Happy first yuletide! I hope it's a great one for you.

Persephone eyes her husband warily. He grins at her in the bright summer sunshine, with about as much playfulness as the man has ever offered as he gestures toward his latest and most desperate gift : a new car. Has to hurt his eyes, all this sun, she thinks, even with the glasses; he’s doing his best not to complain about it.

“What do you think, lover?” He asks. He playfully leans over the door. He is trying, she knows, very hard. This is one of his grand romantic gestures. She treats it accordingly.

She does not answer right away. She takes her hand, and runs it over the door – metal bound and made by his workers, leather stitched over the tops so that she does not have to suffer the indignity of cold metal hitting her arms as she gets in. She thinks of the workers who made it, who have poured their blood and sweat into this vehicle; they are not here. They do not get two weeks’ vacation, beyond in that the boss is gone up top to visit his missus and as such, they may work perhaps a bit slower.

And the boss, well, he is here, rubbing at his brow, unused to the heat of the sun in his three-piece suit. Or perhaps he is just nervous.

He is trying, very hard. Very hard indeed. And there is, she knows, a lot on the line.

Over the last few weeks, ever since she came up and the boy sent that girl back _down_ , there’s been words being exchanged. The events downstairs have unleashed an outright flurry of letters between her and him, at first small but fiery pointed screeds (generally her) and larger manifestos (him; he is a silent man but for when he gets going, and when he gets going, he gets _going_ ). Took work and time, but eventually, every letter seemed to be bringing them closer, circling one another in their dance. They want the same thing – mostly. 

Gradually, his letters became less manifestos and more contract negotiations – it was agreed, in the end, to keep their six-month separation, with one notable exception: one two-week break in June, where spring bled into summertime, where he would come up for two weeks as a vacation. She would pick the spot, and he would get to enjoy her company, sans interruptions, for two full weeks. She had agreed to this, but countered that she would have the full three months before, and three months after – the two weeks would come out of his time, not hers. To her surprise, he had agreed. A fair agreement.

And now here he was. With her chariot, she supposed.

“It’s for you,” he says. He puts a hand on her shoulder; she does not toss it away. Feels nice, nicer than she would have thought it might.

“I see that,” she says, quiet. “Different sort of vehicle, this.” And it is, and she sees that, too; only Hades can move the metal tracks where it needs going, only Pluto can keep the train tracks flowing unto the Pleiades. But any person can move a car. A car can go anywhere; not locked on any path ‘cept the road and this country is young, has a million roads. If she gets bored, well, ain’t that hard to put it on a boat, go wander somewhere else on this little blue ball of water. And of course, she has no doubt it’s been well modified to go above and below, as she pleases, to the heavens and the hells. She could go _anywhere_.

“Made the bow myself,” he says. She looks at it, comically large at the top; she wonders how many times he tied and re-tied the black ribbon until it was perfectly just so. There’s a sweetness to this gesture, deep down, that she has missed in him, and she is trying to see his good traits over his bad ones.

“Very sweet,” she says, soft. She leans into him and closes her eyes, tries to forget all the worker’s sweat that went into this new ride. That’s another discussion, one they haven’t had yet. Maybe on this two-week holiday, she’ll broach the subject, and maybe he won’t shut her down.

He is trying, and she is hoping.

She grabs his hand resting on her shoulder, kisses it, looking up at him all the while because the man is weak to that, someone daring to look at him all smoldering. Something tender shifts on that big old face, and he pulls away his hand so he can take off his glasses and she turns so she can see him better. It’s nice to see those old smoky browns again; he looks at her plain, and the look on his face is a good and seductive sort.

“Hey,” he says. “ _Hey_.” And then he leans inward, cups her cheek; she, on instinct, leans up, and she thinks _he is going to kiss me_ , and he does. And it’s the sort of kiss that makes her toes curl. He presses harder against her, presses her up against the door, and her hands go through his grey hair, hold him tighter still. He kisses her for a good long time, until he has to pause for breath, and even then, he huffs at her shoulder, inhales her scent as she does his.

He still smells the same, all these years later: leather and dirt, mostly, with a faint whiff of brimstone underneath.

“Hey yourself,” she says, and it comes out a little bit gravely, him having kissed sense out of her a bit. “It’s nice,” she says.

“I’m glad,” he says. Simple and odd, a conversation that’s lasted five minutes without arguing. Persephone decides to press her luck.

She plays with his tie, feels the involuntary smile as she does. The memories of the last time she focused on that tie aren’t good ones, and she’s eager to replace them with something better.

“I’m driving,” she says.

“Suppose it’s your due,” he replies, chasing it with a little chuckle at the end; then he follows it up with a kiss that is nothing short of _scalding_. The urge to curl her hands round his side, shove him into the backseat of the car and let nature take its course is a powerful one. It’s been a long time since mother nature took her course, Persephone thinks a bit wistfully. His hands cup her ass in a way that cannot, in any possible way, be considered remotely misconstrued as anything but _i-want-ya._ Same page, there, for the first time in – who knows?

He is trying. Trying very hard. She runs her hands through his hair and kisses his neck, thinks: _I am trying too._ Last winter she stared at his slick silver hair from across the train and wondered if she could ever stand to touch him again.

Now she – well, she wants to do more than touch.

She goes on the offensive, a blur of kisses; he answers back, and she should feel ashamed to be making out like this, as old as they are and as public as this is, but she doesn’t regret a damn bit of it, and he obviously doesn’t either. “Keep this up, we might not get very far,” she murmurs, though they are old enough to know that the destination matters little; they have seen it all, many a time. 

“Don’t matter much to me,” he says. “Wherever you want.”

And he’s giving up the control in that, and that, she knows, is the real gift, the unspoken gift: a man like Hades, he’s a subterranean man, the sort whose words and deeds have to be mined for their true intent. He might speak plain, but there are a million meanings under those words.

“Get in,” she says, and true to his word, he dutifully inches over to the passenger side. He looks a little ridiculous in his big coat and vest in the middle of June, but she supposes she will just have to go a little fast to cool him down. That’s all right. Persephone’s a bit of a fast girl anyway, and he’s always known that to be true.

He lets his hand brush her thigh as she turns the key, listens to the symphony of Hadestown as the engine turns. For the first time in a long time, her stomach only turns a little. She’ll work on it. He’ll work on it, too. They’ll make the old town work the right way again, in the end, whatever way that’s gonna be.

She closes her eyes; his hand lies on her thigh, and it feels more like a guiding finger on a map than anything else.

“Where to, outdoor girl?” He asks, voice a little woody all its own.

“I don’t know,” she says. And that’s the truth; she plans on just driving until she finds something that calls to her, or something acceptable to him, which may well not be the same thing though she hopes it will be so. “But I know we aren’t going to look back.”

She doesn’t mean that literally. They’ve learned one thing from Orpheus.

He nods, swallowing a bit. That’s not quite an apology from him, for all the rot-gut things he did, but she isn’t quite ready for an apology. It’s not quite a confession on her part either, but he holds onto her thigh and that feels, in its own way, like absolution.

“I’m with you,” he says. It’s enough. It’s warm in the car, and the sun is bright; she knows by midday he’ll be grumbling, and she knows that it might well annoy her, and she knows there are so many conversations left to be had between them before things feel, in any way, normal.

But for now, her heart feels light, and she squeezes affectionately at his shoulder as she heads off toward the path not yet traveled. 


End file.
